From Agaju Madugba, Kaduna
A foremost child’s rights organisation, Save the Children International (SCI), yesterday, in Kaduna began a five-day training for a cross section of journalists from across the country on ending child marriage in Nigeria.
According to an SCI Information and Communications Coordinator, Akpan Effiong, part of the goals of the programme is to accelerate the national agenda to end child marriage and influence various state governments, especially Gombe and Katsina, to develop and adopt strategies to end child marriage.
He said the workshop would also determine strategies to operationalise the Child’s Right documents, including the Child Right’s Bills and Laws in the affected states.
He said: “Child marriage is not the only problem facing female children in Nigeria. Child marriage accounts for some of the worst and lopsided outcomes for health, nutrition, education and poverty, among female children.
“The workshop will create and strengthen media platforms to write objective and gender-sensitive reports on child marriage and other child’s rights issues.”
The UNICEF defines child marriage as marriage for the girl-child carried out before the age of 18 years and that it is a human rights violation.
The United Nations organ believes some 21 percent of the global population of young women in 2020 were married before the age of 18 years and most of the figures in sub-Saharan Africa.